Artwork by Lionel LeMoine FitzGerald,  Pastoral Landscape, circa 1914-1917
Thumbnail of Artwork by Lionel LeMoine FitzGerald,  Pastoral Landscape, circa 1914-1917 Thumbnail of Artwork by Lionel LeMoine FitzGerald,  Pastoral Landscape, circa 1914-1917 Thumbnail of Artwork by Lionel LeMoine FitzGerald,  Pastoral Landscape, circa 1914-1917

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Cowley Abbott
326 Dundas St West
Toronto ON M5T 1G5
Ph. 1(416)479-9703

Lot #19

L.L. FitzGerald
Pastoral Landscape, circa 1914-1917

oil on canvas
titled and dated "c. 1919" to a label on the reverse
35 x 47 in ( 88.9 x 119.4 cm )

Auction Estimate: $35,000.00$25,000.00 - $35,000.00

Provenance:
Commissioned from the Artist for the Gardiner Funeral Home, Winnipeg
Loch Art Gallery, Winnipeg
Private Collection, Calgary, 1975
Joyner, auction, Toronto, 28 November 1989, lot 137
Private Collection
Heffel, auction, Vancouver, 26 May 2011, lot 305
Private Collection
Winnipeg artist Lionel LeMoine FitzGerald’s first encounter with art was in grade three when he was introduced to reproductions of art masterpieces produced by the Perry Picture Company. By grade seven the precocious child excelled at drawing lessons using Prang’s New Graded Course in Drawing for Canadian Schools. At age fifteen, FitzGerald discovered the writings of British art critic John Ruskin (1819–1900) who led him to study reproductions of nineteenth-century landscape paintings by John Constable (1776–1837) and J.M.W. Turner (1775–1851). After taking drawing lessons at A.S. Keszthelyi’s School of Fine Arts in 1909, FitzGerald hoped to work in a commercial art firm. While he did not find employment during a brief stay in Chicago in 1910, the twenty-year-old no doubt spent time at the Art Institute of Chicago where contemporary American landscape paintings reflecting Barbizon and Impressionist influences were on display.

By 1911, FitzGerald had met Glasgow-trained artist Donald MacQuarrie (1872-after 1932) who was to become the first curator at the Winnipeg Museum of Fine Arts in late 1912. During his tenure, MacQuarrie was in charge of an exhibition of “Modern Scottish Art” which was so well received that Richardson Bros. organized a show of Scottish watercolours the following year. These pictures would have been conservative views of nature reflecting MacQuarrie’s personal taste for the hazy atmospheric "plein air" landscapes of Camille Corot.

This Barbizon influence appealed to FitzGerald when he shared studio space with MacQuarrie in 1914. The two artists held a sale together in May 1914, and visitors included several well-known local collectors. This may be when FitzGerald came to the attention of the Gardiner Funeral Home in Winnipeg, founded by George Gardiner (1852–1912). When previously on the art market, "Pastoral Landscape" was identified as a mural commissioned by the Gardiner Funeral Home, although no documentation has survived. The large size of the painting, so unusual for FitzGerald at this point in his career, supports the notion that it was intended to decorate an architectural setting.

While FitzGerald is heralded as an artist who painted directly from nature, this charming picture was carefully constructed in his studio. The remarkable composition, in which a central clump of trees divides the painting into a distant view of a lake with open sky (left) and a dense forest glade (right), suggests that the painting may well have been designed to harmonize with the architecture of a specific room. With pastel-like brilliance and dappled Impressionist brushstrokes, "Pastoral Landscape" conjures a lyrical vision of peace and tranquility.

We extend our thanks to Michael Parke-Taylor, Canadian art historian, curator, and author of "Bertram Brooker: When We Awake!" (McMichael Canadian Art Collection, 2024) and editor of "Some Magnetic Force: Lionel LeMoine FitzGerald Writings" (Concordia University Press, 2023) for contributing the preceding essay.
Sale Date: November 27th 2024

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Cowley Abbott
326 Dundas St West
Toronto ON M5T 1G5
Ph. 1(416)479-9703


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Lionel LeMoine FitzGerald
(1890 - 1956) Group of Seven, Canadian Group of Painters, WSC

Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, where he received his education. At the age of 14, he went to work in a wholesale drug office. He also worked in an engraver’s plant and in a stockbroker’s office until he was 22. All this time, he had also attended art classes, nights, at A.S. Kesztheli’s Art School in Wpg. (1909-12). About 1912, he went into the field of art full time. He married Vally Wright and they had two children, Edward and Patricia. Working in many branches of art to support his family, he did everything from decorating windows to painting scenery. During this time, he was developing successfully in his easel painting and exhibited with the RCA between 1912 and 1925. His work was then strongly influenced by French Impressionists but was Canadian in subject matter. He held his first solo shows in 1921 at the WAG. Earlier that year, he had completed studies at the ASL/NY under Boardman Robinson and Kenneth Hayes Miller. In 1924, he joined the staff of the Winnipeg School of Art and four years later became its principal. Of this period, William Colgate in “Canadian Art” (1943) noted, “…he returned to Winnipeg to teach in its art school. In spite of his necessary preoccupation with teaching, he was steadily pursued his bent as a landscape painter and has occasionally been represented in more important exhibitions of Winnipeg, Toronto and elsewhere…”

Writing about his work, Donald Buchanan noted, “…Fitzgerald…worked too slowly and painstakingly ever to be affected by such vagaries of fashion…painted little, and that little with precise care. Most of his year was given over to his duties as principal of the Winnipeg School of Art. The relatively few water-colours and oils he did of the prairie or of the thin tracery of trees along the edges of Manitoba streams were, however, always much admired, as were also his more numerous drawings….”

Fitzgerald had been appointed Principal of the WSA in August of 1929. In the summer of 1929, he also met Bertram Brooker, artist, broadcaster and playwright, visiting his native Winnipeg on a business trip. The two artists then kept in contact with one another by letter. Fitzgerald had a profound influence on Brooker’s direction in art. Brooker turned from total abstraction to realism. Fitzgerald himself had moved to a greater stylization of his work. In 1929, F.B. Housser wrote, “His work is rarely seen in eastern galleries. A few years ago, his canvases were among the most popular exhibited in Winnipeg but a change of direction along more modern lines carried him ahead of the public and consequently into greater obscurity…. He works in oils and black-and-white and has also done mural painting, having executed a decorative scheme for a room in the St. Charles Hotel, Winnipeg.”

This change was to lead him into the ranks of the Group of Seven, the last member, in 1932, replacing J.E.H MacDonald, who had died earlier that year. Fitzgerald’s work took on more design, his trees became less detailed while at the same time his development of scenes from his house or his backyard began to appear; these were more meticulous, although never cluttered in detail. In 1933, he became a founding member of the Canadian Group of Painters, which grew out of the Group of Seven, when it disbanded the same year. By the late 1940’s and 1950’s, he had returned to the cycle of the Impressionists, particularly reminiscent of one of its later members, Georges Seurat, although there is no evidence to suggest that he actually studied Seurat’s work. It was said of him, “A painter of the prairies, he was nevertheless a quiet man, the antithesis of the robustness sometimes associated with the West….” He made impressive graphics which included wood engravings, drypoints, and was especially successful with his linocuts. His drawings were always superb.

He did abstract and semi-abstract work in the 1950’s and had done a few in the late 1930’s. Some of his pen and ink drawings were done by making tiny flecks or short strokes to form an outline of his subjects. The National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa has one of the finest collections of his work due to prudent purchases by its curators, singular bequest of the Douglas M. Duncan Collection, made through Duncan’s sister J.P. Barwick.

He was awarded an Honorary L.L.D., at the University of Manitoba (1952). In 1956, at the age of 66, he died of a heart attack. His ashes were scattered over the area of Snowflake, Manitoba, where he spent his youth during his summer holidays on his grandmother’s farm. In April of 1958, four galleries collaborated in a memorial exhibition at the NGC. The exhibition then went on tour. In May of 1963, an exhibition of 128 of his works titled, “A New Fitzgerald”, was shown at the WAG. The show included portraits, animal sketches, landscapes and a number of nudes.

In the Winnipeg suburb of St. James where he lived most of his life, the community named a lane “Fitzgerald’s Walk” in his memory.

Literature Source:
"A Dictionary of Canadian Artists, Volume 1: A-F, 5th Edition, Revised and Expanded", compiled by Colin S. MacDonald, Canadian Paperbacks Publishing Ltd, Ottawa, 1997